At the present time, vast amounts of programing are transmitted through various media throughout the United States which programing is handled with significant degrees of manual processing as different, discrete units of programing transmitted on single channel systems. Broadcasters and cablecasters transmit programing with the expectation that viewers in one place tune to only one channel at a time.
On occasion and on a limited scale, the co-ordination of two media and two channels has occurred. Such co-ordination has taken the form of stereo simulcasts where one local television station broadcasts a program, generally of classical music, and simultaneously, a local radio station broadcasts the same music in stereo. But such simulcasts require significant degrees of manual processing at both the points of origination and reception.
Today great potential exists for a significant increase in the scope and scale of multi-media and multi-channel presentations. This increase is desirable because it will increase variety and add substantially to the richness of presentations as regards both entertainment and the communications of ideas and information.
This potential arises out of two simultaneous, independent trends. One is the development and growth of the so-called cable television industry whose member companies deliver locally not one but many channels of programing. The other is the widespread and growing ownership of computers, especially microcomputers in homes.
It is the object of this invention to unlock this potential by the development of means and methods which permit programing to communicate with equipment that is external to television and radio receivers, particularly computers and computer peripherals such as printers.
It is the further purpose of this invention to provide means and methods to process and monitor such transmissions and presentations at individual receiver sites and to control, in certain ways, the use of transmitted programing and the operation of certain associated equipment. Such receiver sites may be stations or systems that intend to retransmit the programing, or they may be end users of the programing. The present invention contemplates that certain data may be encrypted and that certain data collected from such processing and monitoring will automatically be transfered to a remote geographic location or locations.
In the prior art, there have been attempts to develop systems to control programing and systems to monitor programing, but the two have been treated as separate systems, and each has had limited capacity.
As regards control systems, cueing systems and equipment now exist that transmit instructions to operating equipment at receiver sites by means of tone signals that are carried, in television transmissions, in the audio portion and may be heard by the human ear. Such systems and devices are used to turn on equipment such as videotape players and recorders that have been manually loaded and to tell such equipment how long to run. Such systems operate by transmitting operating signals that precede and follow programing and are called "headers" and "trailers" respectively. The use of headers and trailers limits prior art in that headers and trailers can become separated from programing, thereby hampering automatic operations. Such prior art techniques have lacked the capacity to process the programing in various ways including to instruct receiver end equipment what specific programing to select to play or record other than that immediately at hand, how to load it on player or recorder equipment, when and how to play it or record it other than immediately, how to modify it, what equipment or channel or channels to transmit it on, when to transmit it, and how and where to file it or refile it or dispose of it. (Within television studios that are original transmitters of programing, certain systems and equipment do exist for certain automatic co-ordination of players, loaders, and other equipment; however, manual instructions still must be given, on site, for the co-ordination of such equipment which instructions are transmitted electronically on hardwire channels that are strictly separate from the channels on which the programing is transmitted and such instructions are never broadcast.) Such prior art systems and equipment have lacked the capacity to automatically coordinate multi-channel and multi-media presentations. They have lacked the capacity to decrypt encrypted processing signals. They have lacked the capacity to monitor whether receiver-end equipment are following instructions properly.
As regards monitoring systems, various systems and devices have been developed to determine what programing is played on television. One such system for monitoring programs is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,025,851 to Haselwood, et al. Another that monitors by means of audio codes that are only "substantially inaudible" is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,845,391 to Crosby. Recently devices, called addressable converters, have been developed that facilitate so-called pay-per-view marketing of programing by monitoring what individual television receivers tune to and either permitting or preventing the tuners to tune to given frequencies satisfactorily. Such prior art techniques and equipment have been limited to monitoring single broadcast stations, channels or units and have lacked the ability to monitor multimedia presentations. They have been able to monitor only the audio or the video portion of television transmissions. They have been able either to monitor what is transmitted over one channel or what is received by one or more receivers but not both. They have lacked the capacity to record and transfer information simultaneously. They have been unable to decrypt encrypted signals. They have been able to monitor only single signal word types or word lengths that are placed, within the transmissions, in locations that are unvarying and unvariable. They have lacked the capacity to compare, assemble, and/or evaluate multi-word, multi-location signals. Except in the possible case of addressable converters, they have been unable to distinguish the absence of signals or signal words in transmissions. They have lacked the capacity to communicate processing instructions to external equipment as described in the paragraph above. It is the object of the present invention to overcome these and other deficiencies of the prior art.
(The term "signal unit" hereinafter means one complete signal instruction or information message unit. Examples of signal units are a unique code identifying a programing unit, or a unique purchase order number identifying the proper use of a programing unit, or a general instruction identifying whether a programing unit is to be retransmitted immediately or recorded for delayed transmission. The term "signal word" hereinafter means one full discrete appearance of a signal as embedded at one time in one location on a transmission. Examples of signal words are a string of one or more digital data bits encoded together on a single line of video or sequentially in audio. Such strings may or may not have predetermined data bits to identify the beginnings and ends of words. Signal words may contain parts of signal units, whole signal units, or groups of partial or whole signal units or combinations.)
It is a further object of the present invention to process and monitor signals on numerous channels by sequentially scanning each channel in a predetermined manner which manner may be varied. It is also an object of the present invention to prevent unauthorized use of signals and programing by permitting signal encryption, the variation of word numbers, word lengths, word compositions, and/or word locations. It is also an object of this system to process different signal words in different ways. It is also an object of the present invention to provide a record of signals that may be transferred to a geographically distant location on command or predetermined instruction.
Other objects of this invention will appear from the following descriptions and the appended claims.